


Testament

by Wonderfully_Wandering_Alone



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship, Season/Series 03, Smoking, just before the Unknowing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:46:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27654302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wonderfully_Wandering_Alone/pseuds/Wonderfully_Wandering_Alone
Summary: Jon listens to their testaments before heading off to face the Unknowing. He knows what to expect when he hears Martin's but it catches in his throat anyway, and he fights to move forward.-----Jon and Martin say goodbye before the Unknowing.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 12
Kudos: 88





	Testament

**Author's Note:**

> ok so maybe he's more season 4 post coma beholding jon here than season 3 but whatevs. it's just fanfic lol

Jon clicks the tape recorder off and slumps forward at his desk. Martin’s words replay through his head at half speed. Everything the others have replied, everything he’s hinted at, everything he’s ever said or done. 

Jon’s known. Of course he has. How could he not notice the way Martin’s face would light up at the sight of him, his voice soften when he talks to Jon? How could he not recognise that desperation to be seen above all else? And now it’s too late for anything they could’ve had, who they could’ve been. 

Jon runs his shaking hands through his hair. It’s already limp and greasy and he’s only making it worse, but he needs to do something to ground himself. 

He never paused to think about it- a pipe dream of a world in which he deserved that loyalty, that trust. That love. There’s so much more at stake here than what he simply wants.

What he wants is to hold Martin’s hand. What he wants is a decent night’s sleep and dreams that are his own. What he wants is a meal that doesn’t taste of cardboard, a meal that offers him sustenance. He wants a world that isn’t trying to kill him six ways to Sunday. A world that doesn't require him and the ones he loves to sacrifice themselves to it. He wants to come back after this all. He wants the same for Tim- and Basira, and Daisy. He wants Martin and Melanie to be okay. 

He wants a goddamn cigarette.

  
  


The night air is warm and stuffy, not the cool respite he was hoping for. Jon still feels as though he’s inside when he closes his eyes, leans his head back against the wall of the institute. He raises his cigarette to his lips, eyes still closed, and takes a drag. His eyes aren't open, but they may as well be for the level of clarity in which he can see the street in front of him. Trees shift in the wind and he can hear the thrum of the city echoing around him. A rat shuffles through the gutter up the road, and he flits his mind away. Never been fond of the creatures. 

A siren sounds, somewhere far off. An ambulance on its way to a house party. Unresponsive drunk kid, but he’s just unconscious with panicked friends. Jon exhales, blowing smoke through his gritted teeth. 

“I thought I might find you out here,” a voice says, accompanied by the soft clock of the door closing behind him.

“Martin,” Jon says, breathes so gently. He keeps his eyes closed. He isn’t sure what will happen if he opens them but he doesn’t trust the thickness in his throat, the sting in the bridge of his nose. 

“Hey, Jon,” Martin says. He moves until they’re next to each other, his arm pressing into Jon’s shoulder. Between Orsinov, Perry, Crew, Daisy- there’s not a lot of touch Jon can trust anymore. But this here, with his eyes closed in the middle of the night, the soft pressure of Martin in his space is - it’s nice. It’s nice in a way Jon has _known_ , but never allowed himself to dwell upon for fear of baiting bad karma. 

“Martin,” he says again. He takes another grounding breath before opening his eyes. He doesn’t look up at him, not yet. Instead he focuses on hands. His own left is tucked into his right elbow crease, his right flopping out from his waist, cigarette hanging limp between his middle and index fingers. The shadows cast from the streetlight further up the road turn his deep brown skin ashen, only highlighting the scars that mark him to experiences he’d rather forget. Pale flecks of scarred skin pockmarked across the back of his hand, disappearing under his watch and continuing up his forearm. The underside, his palm and once-delicate wrist, gnarled and contorted into a violent burn. 

He hates them, his hands. They no longer feel like his, claimed too heavily by those who’d rather he die. He tried painting his nails, reclaiming stolen land and calling them his own once more. But he’s bitten his nails to the quick again, and what’s left of the silver nail polish is chipped and cracked, looking ugly and messier than they were to begin with. Jon pulls his hand out of his line of sight, returning the cigarette to his lips so he’d stop looking. 

Martin’s hands aren’t like Jon’s. They’re softer, round where Jon’s are elongated and sharp. His freckles mirror Jon’s scars in the most divine way- dark marks on paler skin. They’d be clammy to hold, Jon knows, whereas his own are just cold in the same way a corpse would be. Martin has a mole at the base of his right thumb, nestled just below the first knuckle. Jon’s watched it for years, bringing him tea, holding open doors, offering a hand, reaching out. It reaches out now and Jon takes a moment before he cottons on to what Martin’s asking for. He holds out the cigarette and Martin takes it. 

“These things will kill you,” Martin warns as he takes a drag himself. The hypocrisy is why he’s saying it, Jon knows. He says it every time, as if they haven’t done it before. It feels different, now. There’s a finality to it all that rings behind Jon’s eyes. 

“Not like they’ll get the chance to,” Jon says. He’s trying to match Martin’s tone but he falls incredibly flat. Martin’s nose scrunches up in response and Jon winces, but doesn't look away. This is his favourite part; Martin exhales, both looking and sounding like a child holding their nose to avoid the unwanted flavour of a disliked vegetable. It’s endearing, Jon can at least admit to that. 

“Please come home,” Martin says on his next exhale. It’s so quiet Jon could easily pretend not to have heard, but then Martin blinks his eyes open and catches Jon. Jon swallows and holds his gaze.

“Martin,” he says, unsure what else he could possibly do. 

“I need you to come home, Jon. And- and the others. But especially you.” 

Jon says nothing, lets Martin continue. He can see how much Martin is hurting, it’s written so clearly on his face. He wears his heart on his sleeve, this man, and now he’s handing it over to Jon to hold as he bares himself. “I know- it’s not. Ignore the unrequited crush. You’re my best friend, Jon. I don’t know what I’ll do if.” 

He cuts off there, furiously turning his head away. He raises the cigarette to his lips, withdraws it, taps the ashes to the pavement, holds it out to Jon again. Jon takes it. 

“It’s not unrequited,” Jon says eventually. He thought, genuinely, that Martin knew. He thought he’d been anything but subtle on their lunches, when Martin would bring him tea, when they’d stay behind at the Archives until it was too late to leave anyway, neither of them wanting to return to an empty house.

But Martin’s head whips around and he looks Jon in the eye.

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t make shit up to be kind because you, you don’t think you’re coming back. It’s not kind, it’s cruel. I’d rather you came back and hated me again than have you pretend to love me now and die tomorrow.” He’s not crying, but it’s a close thing. He’s not far off, his cheeks blotchy and his eyes heavy, but he’s shed no tears. 

“Martin,” Jon says, dropping the butt and flattening it into the pavement beneath his heel. “I’m not, I. I don’t, I’m not lying. I thought you knew, I thought. I-” 

He falters, as he always does when he has something important to get out. 

“What good is that to me if you don’t come home?” Martin asks, as if Jon even has somewhere to call home anymore. As if Jon has a life to return to. 

But he does, doesn’t he? Isn’t that the whole point? What’s going to keep him fighting harder than the thought of coming home to Martin? Jon lets out a shuddering breath. 

“I will,” Jon promises, hoping more than anything it’s a promise he won’t be breaking. “I’ll come home, and then…” 

“And then what, Jon? You’ll throw yourself back into your work until the next ritual, only for your next near-death experience? You’ll get kidnapped by another avatar, but this time they won’t let you go? Or maybe another entity will decide that actually, they want you too?” Martin sighs. He brings the back of his hand to his forehead and presses it there for a moment, steadying himself. “No, it’s- let’s not do this, not tonight.” 

Jon pushes off the wall and turns so he’s in front of Martin, facing him head on. 

“I can’t quit- you know we can’t quit. But Martin, I will come home. I’ll make it out and I’ll come home and, and I'll listen to you. I’ll slow down. I’ll- we’ll figure something out.”

In a move as much a surprise to Jon as it seems to be for Martin, Jon finds himself raising his left hand and tracing the sharp line shadow across Martin’s cheek. His skin is warm and soft under Jon’s thumb, and his eyes flutter closed for just a moment. Jon stays focused, knowing full well this could be his last chance to properly look at Martin- he’ll see him in the morning when they leave from the institute, but the others will be there, and it won’t be just the two of them. Tonight it is, however. And they’re here, together, in this small pocket outside the prison to which they are bound, bracing themselves to march to their deaths, and Martin is in Jon’s hands with his eyes closed because he trusts Jon, wants to feel Jon’s palm on his face. Jon rises to his tiptoes and leans his forehead against Martin’s. 

“Jon.” Martin breathes his name like a prayer, brings his own hand up to cup Jon’s jaw, a soft thumb brushing tentatively against his bottom lip. Jon was wrong, before. Martin’s hands aren’t clammy. They’re paper soft and strong, and feel like they belong on Jon’s face. 

“Martin,” Jon says, a croak of a voice. “Can I kiss you?” 

His eyes blink open, deep deep brown, so dark they’re almost black. They find Jon and they hold him close, but neither of them move.

“Not,” Martin says, reaching into Jon’s chest with his bare hands as he does so, squeezing tight around his heart. “Not tonight. When you come home.”

”When I come home,” Jon agrees, and pulls away.

**Author's Note:**

> knifemartin on tumblr


End file.
